Too Close For Comfort
by Talwyn
Summary: AU, One Shot. Santana is convicted of a crime she did not commit and ends up strapped to a gurney with needles in her arm and watching the last few seconds of her life tick away. Trigger Warnings: Murder, the Death Penalty, Racism. Note: No one actually dies.


**Authors Note:** I often wonder why people write sad stories, where main characters you love suffer of die, and now I guess I get it a little. I'm not sure where this story came from, but it wouldn't leave me along until I'd written it down and now that I've done that, I hope I can get on with Undying Love without this bugging me.

This is not a happy story, even though it has a "happy" ending. Honestly you probably don't want to read this, but if you do anyway please be aware of the following trigger warnings. You have been warned.

**Trigger Warnings: Murder, the Death Penalty, Racism.**

**Note: **This is un-beta'd, any errors are my own.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Glee or any of the characters, unfortunately.

Edited to fix a few typo's and some mangled tense in the last section.

* * *

It was never supposed to end this way.

_We _were never supposed to end this way. We were supposed to die together, 100 years old, wrinkly and in bed in each other's arms saying our final 'I love you's before drifting into the void together.

Not 29 years old and strapped to a gurney watching an institutional clock tick away the last few seconds of my life. Not having spent the last four years of my life on death row, being rushed through a brand new fast-track system that only seemed to care about how fast it could get the needles in my arm and not about the simple fact that I didn't do it.

I hadn't done anything.

Four years and one month ago, right here in Los Angeles, Brittany left me worn out and sated in our bed to keep a lunch date with one of her dancer friends. She never came home.

The cops didn't listen at first and when they did, they immediately decided I had murdered the girl I loved so much. They didn't even look for her from what I can tell, one day I was telling them everything I knew and a few days later I was being handcuffed, bundled into the back of a cop car and charged with murder one.

The trial was fast-tracked of course and a few weeks later I was sitting in court shocked at the evidence being presented. Threatening notes they claimed I'd written but I knew I didn't, medical records that were obviously (to me) faked and a parade of people I'd never met before standing before the court claiming to be our best friends and saying how they'd tried to persuade Britt to leave me since I beat her all the time. How do you prove you don't know someone when they claim you do?

My parents stood with me of course, as did Britt's. They all knew I would never have hurt her, they all knew I would have died for her, but it was as if their testimony and mine was ignored. The jury took only fifteen minutes to find me guilty. Four years of mandatory appeals later and every time the same thing happened, the same false evidence, the same false testimony and the same verdict.

The private detectives my parents had hired on my behalf hadn't had any luck finding Britt either, so here I was about to die and I didn't even know what had happened to the woman I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.

I wondered if my parents were sitting in the room hidden behind the one-way mirror. Did the Pierces come? I had begged them all not to, they didn't deserve to see this, I didn't want this to be their last memory of me but I knew they might have come anyway.

I'd written my last letters earlier today. One to my parents apologizing for all the stress and pain I'd put them through and begging them to look after Britt for me when they finally find her. One to the Pierces asking them to help my parents through the next few days. And one to Britt, the hardest one but only seven words long.

'Stay strong. I will always love you.'

I'd ordered all Britt's favorite food for my last meal and ate it in my cell trying to imagine having a picnic in the park, a blanket spread over the grass with Britt sitting on the other side and smiling at me. I said my goodbye's then, as best I could. I told Britt to fight on, to live a long and happy life and as much as it hurt, to find someone new to love.

When the priest came I laughed in his face and asked him where his god was in the court room.

There are three lights I can see in the corner of my vision as I watch my time tick away on the oversized hands of the clock on the wall. They told me about them earlier though I have no idea why, rubbing it in maybe? When they green light comes on they'll pump a sedative into me, yellow is a muscle relaxant and red is a substance that will stop my heart beating. They say it's painless and I won't feel a thing after the sedative, but how can they know?

Only a few minutes left and I fill my mind with Britt, how much I love her, how she looked the last time I saw her, hair all wild as she headed into the bathroom to shower, her giggle that never failed to cheer me up, the weird stories she'd always have at a moment's notice. I didn't notice the guard in charge come over until he asks if there was anything I wanted to say.

"Stay strong Britt, I will always love you."

He tells me I should tell them where the body is, it would be a kindness to the Pierce's to be able to bury their daughter and I just huff and look away but I still see the look of disgust he gives me before he turns away.

The second hand sweeps around and hits the twelve and the green light comes on. I feel the pressure in my arm of liquid being pumped in and then the feeling of not quite being attached to my body any more creeping through me. Time seems to slow down and I think I'm already fading away, everything is fuzzy and I wonder if they've given me too much sedative, I guess no one would be bothered about an overdose right now.

But my eyes are still locked on the clock, I can't seem to move anything any more, and I can still see the lights in the corner of my vision and even the sedative doesn't quell the rising panic in my chest so I try to picture Britt smiling at me, promising me that she'll see me soon just like she did the last time I saw her, just before she walked out of the apartment that last time. It helps a little but I can't tell if the pain in my chest is my heart breaking for the woman I love or the effects of the drugs being pumped into me.

There is a pain in my arm just as the yellow light comes on, it wasn't supposed to hurt and I want to cry out mostly in surprise but I can't. But the pain goes quickly enough and the clock ticks on counting down the last few seconds of my life. The last thing I see is the red light coming on before darkness finally engulfs me.

* * *

I didn't expect to wake up and when I did my first thought was that my parents had been right all along and there was a heaven. But the walls of this white room were slightly too dingy, the smell of antiseptic too strong and the beeping of some machine far too annoying. It's only when I manage to turn my head and see my Mama and Papa curled up a bed on the other side of the room that I realized I was in a hospital.

I wonder what happened. Did the final drug not stop my heart? Did my love for Britt keep it beating even as they tried to snuff my life and love out? Are they now nursing me back to health just to try and kill me again? I move my hands expecting to find handcuffs attaching me to the bed, but there's nothing. My ankles are binding free too and I realize that for the first time in four years I'm out of my cell without any sort of restraints.

I sit up, ripping some wires from my chest and wondering if I should try and run but the steady beep of the machine next to the bed turns to an angry whine and almost instantly my Mama wakes. As soon as she sees me sitting up her face turns from anxious to happy and she bounds across the room to pull me into a hug.

"She's alive" is the first thing she says to me, "We've found Britt and she's alive."

It takes me minutes to understand, it's all over. The nightmare that has been the last few years of my life is over, Britt's alive and well and now I have a future again, one that doesn't include being six feet under, at least not for a good few years yet.

I have a second chance at life.

It takes them some time to explain what happened but I get it all in the end. My parents and the Pierces had come that day to the prison and it hurt me so bad to know they'd seen me like that, but it was only because they had come that I was alive. They were sitting in the observation room trying to ignore the camera crew in the corner, my Dad and Mr Pierce trying to comfort their wives as best they could while wanting to break down themselves.

Just after I spoke my last words to Britt, her father's phone had rung. He'd ignored it twice but when it rang again he'd reluctantly answered it and it had only taken him a few words to recognize his daughter's voice. He'd shouted at the District Attorney who was also in the observation room, telling him who was on the phone but the DA ignored him intent only on my death.

My Papa and Mama tried to get to me but the guards stop them, not understanding what was happening. Mrs Pierce was yelling at the DA who was ignoring her and that's when the green light came on. It was Mr Pierce that saved my life, smashing the glass of the one way mirror with the chair he had been sitting on moments before. I guess they never expected anyone to do that.

The pain I had felt just as the yellow light had come on was Britt's father pulling the needles out of my arm.

The DA had been furious, had demanded the doctor replace the needles and restart the process, demanded that my parents and Britt's be arrested and taken away to jail. It was the guard that stops him, the same guard that had looked at me in disgust only a few moments before now saved my life. He refuses to let the needles be pushed back into my arm, there is a proper procedure to be followed for cases like this after all and he's very aware of the television camera now in the same room as him.

So despite the DA's rants and demands to continue the process, an ambulance is called and I'm taken to the nearest hospital to be monitored until the effects of the sedative wear off. By the time I do wake up a few days later, Britt's identity had been verified and the process of getting my conviction annulled was already well underway, the new police chief himself removing the restraints as soon as confirmation of her identity had come through.

Why a new police chief? Well we'll get to that in a bit.

* * *

Britt's arriving at the hospital today. It has been a few days since I woke up but they won't let me leave yet, something about some odd effects the sedative has had on me, but I don't mind since Britt will be here soon and they promised she'd share this small room with me. I turn the little leather covered box my Mama had brought with her today at my request, I've lost so much time that I know there's only one thing I want to do as soon as I see the woman I love.

As I sit there waiting, I finally find out what happened to Britt. She went on a drive with her dancer friend to the suburbs of LA to see a house the other dancer had just bought. They had been hit by a drunk driver and her friend had been killed and because the other woman's purse had been on Britt's lap they thought Britt was the other girl. Both were tall blondes and Britt hadn't taken her purse with her when she left the apartment.

She ended up in some backwoods hospital under her friends name in a coma and it seems her friend didn't have any family to identify her. When the private detectives came to verify that the other blonde in the car wasn't Brittany, they never thought to check the blonde that had survived. She had woken up on the day I was supposed to die and someone had left the TV in her room on a news channel.

When she saw me on the news and heard what was about to happen she started screaming. They thought she was in pain and tried to sedate her, but she knocked the needle away and demanded a phone and didn't stop yelling and screaming and punching until a nurse had passed her a mobile phone. She'd called her Dad's number three times, and thank god he'd never changed it, before he'd answered.

"Dad? Dad! It's me! I'm here, I'm fine, you have to stop them!"

But Britt's here now, they just helped her into the other bed in this room. She looks so skinny and weak but I guess that's what being in a coma in bed for four years will do to you. She's looking at me with her big blue eyes and I can see the tears rolling down her cheeks. I can't help but cry myself at what I've missed, what I almost never had again, but she's here with me now and that's all that matters.

I push myself out of bed and cross to sit in the edge of her bed, still unsteady on my feet but careful not to hurt her. Her chest is heaving now and she's straight out sobbing, she's trying to apologize for everything that's happened but I shush her and tell her it wasn't her fault. I sit there for a while just holding her hand fighting the urge to hug her since I don't want to hurt her and she still looks to fragile.

She calms eventually, the heart breaking sobs turning to the occasional sniffle, and when she can look at me without bursting into tears I open the little box my Mama brought and show her the ring glittering inside that has been passed down through my family for generations. For many years I had thought I'd never have the chance to do this and while I'd made up many grand speeches in my dreams, it turns out there is only one thing I can say.

"Marry me?"

"Yes"

* * *

I'm back in court again, months after the day I was supposed to die. The cameras are all pointing at me again but this time I'm not sitting at the defense table but in the gallery with Britt at my side, her arm in mine and my ring glittering on her finger.

We had come for the verdict in the case against the old DA, Police Chief a bunch of police officers and a whole lot of other people. There's a guy that worked in a hospital records room that doctored Britt's records, there are a number of people that had claimed to be our friends and had testified against me, I even recognize people that had been in the jury for my trial and various appeals and finally there's the judge.

Even though the DA and Police Chief had been suspended at first, they had tried to play it off as an unfortunate mistake. We'd had to go to the media and Britt had sat beside me as we'd went through court video after court video and denied the lies that had been told about us. The outcry that had caused spread nationwide.

Eventually police internal affairs had gotten involved, cops sent in from out of state to investigate and the truth had come out. It turns out they were all connected, all in the same white supremacy group. The investigating officer had seen a white girl missing and a Latina being the last person to see her and had decided I'd killed her, not even bothering to investigate. From then on they had all worked together to rail-road me onto that gurney.

The foreman of the jury stands and reads out the verdict.

"Guilty."

I keep my face blank but squeeze Britt's hand. We both stand and walk out of the court room, cameras tracking our every movement. I don't want to know if any of them got the death penalty.

* * *

It's been a year since the day I was supposed to die and I'm grateful for every one of them. Britt and I got married shortly after the guilty verdict had been announced. The state had paid out an immense amount of compensation and with that and the renewed sales of the albums I'd released before the day Britt went missing and the book deal I had recently signed, I know I won't have to work for a very long time. Even so I am already working on a new album.

We've moved to New York since I couldn't stand LA any more. Britt is splitting her work time between teaching at a dance school and choreographing on Broadway but every evening she comes home to me and we fall asleep in each other's arms.

And each morning when I wake, I hold her tight and thank whatever deity that might exist that I got a second chance.


End file.
